WesWorld

One of the issues raised before has been 'what is an acceptable ratio between dry docks and ships in service for maintenance requirements'? Here is some research on one particular real world case.

The Kaiserliche Marine had grown to be the second largest Navy by 1914. It was built by a collection of private yards with some construction by the three Navy operated yards; Wilhelmshaven Naval Dockyard, Kiel Naval Dockyard and Danzig Naval Dockyard. Of the three Danzig was the smallest and focused on small craft upto cruisers and uboats.

It turns out that all refits, repairs, maintenance, etc. was carried out by the Naval Dockyards, the private yards were only involved in building the ships. From this we can narrow down the proportion of tail to teeth in a modern navy.

By 1914, Wilhelmshaven had a workforce of 11,500, carried out 40 dockings per year and had 8 graving docks, 1 large floating dock, 5 smaller ones and 4 ones for TB. Kiel had a workforce of 10,500, carried out 36 dockings per year and had 6 Graving docks and 2 large floating docks.

In 1914, the KM had 22 pre-Dreadnoughts, 8 Armoured Cruisers , 17 Dreadnoughts and 6 Battlecruisers.
Pairing up 14 graving docks and 53 ships;
3 of the BC had only 2 docks to fit them (both at Wilhelmshaven)
2 of the BC could fit in 5 docks (all at Wilhelmshaven)
the last BC and 17 Dreadnoughts had 7 docks available (all at Wilhelmshaven)
The 30 pre-Dreadnoughts and Armoured Cruisers could fit 8 docks at Wilhelmshaven and 2 at Kiel. The other 4 docks at Kiel were smaller.

The ratios are 3 ships to 1 dock for PD/AC, 2.5 to 1 for BB/BC, 1 to 1 for large BC

On average a dock will handle 5 ships per year. If we made allowance for floating docks perhaps we could suggest that you would need to have 1 drydock available for 4 or 5 ships in your fleet and that this drydock can't be used for construction purposes.

Thoughts?

Cheers,

VERY usefull information Roger. Thanks for sharing! I agree on the drydocks.

The key part was that the Naval Yards handled all maintenance, none was contracted out to Vulcan, Germania, Schichau etc. The building going on in Navy yards was to give the navy a benchmark on prices and keep the private yards competitive. Where the navy struggled was the relationship with Krupps and the monopoly they had in guns and armour.

Another interesting thing was that Tirpitz relied on private yards to carry out R&D, beyond some materials testing the navy did very little. As such they had to rely on Germania (Krupps yard) to develop uboats when Krupps spent the better part of a decade trying to produce their own 4 stroke diesel while a suitable one was available from MAN. The Parsons Turbine was another case where industry tried different things and then ended up having to get Parsons set up a German subsidury.

Greece has been using docks for construction for years so this would have quite an impact.

Cheers,

Speaking from the Romanian perspective, it would have quite an impact on the Romanian Fleet as well. If such a rule were to be put into place, Romania, which has 5 drydocks could service 20-25 ships. Her current fleet is numbered at 36 vessels, so by my understanding around 1/3 of the Romanian navy, and likely other navies would have either "disappear" or be scrapped.

I'm not advocating a rule change. If anything, the cost of infrastructure by the rules is too high (A RN Town class CL from WW1 was equal to a shipyard worth 5IP). The point was to establish a relationship between maintenance and fleet size. Now I see why building in drydocks was rare.

Cheers,

With my Irish and Bulgarian hats on, I agree that infrastructure is way too overpriced. Even Chile's infastructure is something I'm not absolutely happy with; I once sat down and calculated that I could spend 9 IP on new drydocks, 8 IP on new slip construction, and 4 IP on expansions. That's over four years of production for me, and THAT would probably get me to the point where I don't feel constricted by my yard space any more. In the end, my DD project is going to overflow onto Class 2 slips just so I can maintain the rate of delivery.

Playing Ireland and Azerbaijan, I *had* to go buy a new slipway, because even with two factories in Ireland it wasn't enough to actually build new units. I could build tonnage but lacked ships to use it on. (Granted, I probably ought to be buying foreign like a junkie, but I prefer doing my own designs and building them new to simply acquiring a bunch of secondhand stuff.)

Part of the reason I've advocated building 1.5 and 2.5 docks (and so on). There are some ships I'd like Bulgaria to be able to build that can't fit on 557 feet, but I don't need 721 feet either.

For instance, this is what I'd have proposed for infrastructure. The idea is to fill in some gaps: for instance, I have difficulty fitting most of my light cruiser designs on only 557 feet, and so I'd be willing to expand Bulgaria's drydock to 640 feet to build a slightly better light cruiser, or a heavy cruiser. Chile would be interested in upgrading to a 3.5-type dock, because it really doesn't need a full Class 4, but the Class 3 is a bit tight for modern fast capital ships. The partial facilities wouldn't really change the nature of the game, it'd just offer some countries more options regarding their infrastructure. Speaking for myself, I would use the new slip types a great deal because they tend to be more in the region of my ship designs.

The MTB yard is basically for those small countries which don't have a lot of IP to throw around, and want some small facilities on the cheap to build more MTBs than possible under Rule 2.1 (light craft produced in factories) without blocking up larger slips. For instance, Bulgaria would be interested in building two or three MTB yards on the Danube, and they could be decent infrastructure for inland countries like Bolivia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia...

Of course there's always the idea I had of giving out IP-only factories, such as one IPFactory for every three regular factories, in order to improve infrastructure. (IPFactories couldn't build other factories, though.) But that idea got shot down.

Size Type Length (m) Length (ft) Cost Turnaround time
MTB Yard 35m 115ft 0.1IP 1 week

0 Slip 70m 230ft 0.5IP 1 week
0 Dry-dock 70m 230ft 1IP 1 week

.5 Slip 95m 312ft .75IP 1 week
.5 Dry-dock 95mft 312 1.5IP 2 weeks

1 Slip 120m 393ft 1IP 2 weeks
1 Dry-dock 120m 393ft 2IP 2 weeks

1.5 Slip 145m 476ft 1.5IP 2 weeks
1.5 Dry-dock 145m 476ft 2.5IP 3 weeks

2 Slip 170m 557ft 2IP 3 weeks
2 Dry-dock 170m 557ft 3IP 3 weeks

2.5 Slip 195m 640ft 2.5IP 3 weeks
2.5 Dry-dock 195m 640ft 3.5IP 4 weeks

3 Slip 220m 721ft 3IP 4 weeks
3 Dry-dock 220m 721ft 4IP 4 weeks

3.5 Slip 245m 804ft 3.5IP 4 weeks
3.5 Dry-dock 245m 804ft 4.5IP 5 weeks

4 Slip 270m 885ft 4IP 5 weeks
4 Dry-dock 270m 885ft 5IP 5 weeks

4.5 Slip 295m 968ft 4.5IP 5 weeks
4.5 Dry-dock 295m 968ft 5.5IP 6 weeks

5 Slip 320m 1049ft 5 6 weeks
5 Dry-dock 320m 1049ft 6 6 weeks

Didn't the yanks use a "Marine Railway" type of thing in the Pacific.

Could one of these not be used for building and launching as well as recovery for repair/maintainance?

And a price of 0.1 or 0.2 ip would be a reasonable price for such an installation.

It would certainly make sense to me. Those little yards might represent the small civilian powerboat or trawler-manufacturers who build small boats in this category.

For instance, anywhere with a local fishing industry would probably have these smaller facilities for serving small trawlers. In wartime they'd have the expertise to construct things like MTBs and perhaps small landing craft. I, at least, would run them as navy-subsidized private boatbuilders who keep their shops to produce military-standard boats.

Edit: this kind of small-craft yard is what I intended by an MTB/Small Craft Yard.

Building MTBs and other fast craft is quite specialised actually as you've got lightweight hulls of strange shapes that are difficult to construct. You've also got aluminium becoming more common instead of wood.

Even so, I think a .1IP facility capable of building MTBs and very small craft - perhaps as large as the 245-ton YMS-class minesweepers, even - would be a substantial low-end help to smaller countries and countries trying to build on inland waterways. I see this being more of a help to smaller and middle-sized countries than anything else, honestly.

Perhaps if we used CG's "marine railway" system - and I too recall seeing something to that effect in a book - it could cost .2IP and produce or repair four MTBs per quarter? Those kind of craft fall under our under-200t vessel rules anyway.

The .5-increment slips, on the other hand, just seem to be a big more common-sense to me than anything else. That has the potential of being more useful to more people. For instance, Hood's recent design contest for Argentina: the ships selected will fit in this hypothetical Class 3.5 dock, and it'd only take .5 IP to upgrade an existing Class 3. Almost all of us can cough up that much IP if we work it right. Even Ireland has managed to do it with two factories.

I agree with RA, fast attack craft are more like aircraft construction than fishingboat construction.

Its almost like you need to say that a yard has a particular tech level .ie if it is 1900 level it can build wooden minesweepers, if it's 1920 level it can build riveted steel ships with low pressure boilers, if it's 1930 level it can build welded steel ships with high pressure boilers etc. As yards get more advanced they can build longer ships.

If you look at RN destroyers, they ceased development after 1930 in comparison to US and German ships and didn't catch up until the Darings post-war.

Cheers,

I agree on the light wooden ship points, a book I have on the Appledore shipyard in Devon describes the use of undercover sheds during World War 2 for construction of MLs, MTBs and MGBs, with the work force including golf club makers and 20 women.

I also tend to agree on the MTB issue, they were complex craft to build. That said there are heaps of other type of craft that are simple enough for small nations to produce in significant numbers.

What about the .5 docks/slips?

I have to admit it would be nice to be able to build "half slips" as extentions to existing full size slips.
Docks on the otherhand seem to be a more problematic issue by nature.

As Roger suggests they seem to be a somewhat neglected infrastructure asset.

What would really hurt would be putting a width on slips and docks...

When the Germans went from pre-Dreds to Dreadnoughts the private yards went to various means to widen their slips and then tried to patent 'wide berth' construction.

Cheers,

Quoted

Originally posted by alt_naval
What would really hurt would be putting a width on slips and docks...

Oy, yes. Yes it would...

Quoted

As Roger suggests they seem to be a somewhat neglected infrastructure asset.

Only because they have no relationship with fleet readiness or even a fleet size limit, which is what the CT was for. They are actually far cheaper than we have them. The Kaiserliche Marine was expanding their navy yards in 1912 to handle the next generation of Dreadnoughts with an investment of 12,000,000RM (about a 1/4 of the cost of a Baden or Mackensen) for the Kiel and Wilhelmshaven yards.

Cheers,

I would totally be amenable to making drydocks cheaper!

Realistically, though, I think it's something of a good thing. I know that if even large drydocks were less expensive, we'd just build a heck of a lot more of them, and try to squeeze out more battleships.